The project is concerned with the design and implementation of the language M. While adopting Java syntax, and a lot of its infrastructure, the language fundamentally supports distributed, secure, persistent, capability-based computing, as necessary to support the notion of a world-wide collection of distributed virtual worlds (see the Matrix project). The fundamental ideas are to

• use type parameters and variables (extending Generic Java ),
• introduce promises (as in the language E, and in concurrent constraint programming),
• eschew Java Threads in favor of container-based concurrency and data-flow synchronization,
• use delegation and a unified type hierarchy (as in C#), and,
• use a simple scheme (perhaps based on VatTP) for secure inter-vat communication of arbitrary objects.

Custom classloaders will be used to perform extended byte code verification to ensure type safety.

The project is expected to make significant contributions to the design of rich type systems for object-oriented languages, and to static analysis and compilation techniques. If successful, it should lead to the widespread development and use of secure, distributed, persistent, extensible virtual worlds.